The inventive concept relates to electronic devices having displays and to chips for driving electronic displays. More particularly, the inventive concept relates to a display drive chip that includes circuitry to prevent an electrostatic discharge (ESD) from damaging the chip.
Electrostatic discharge (ESD) is a momentary discharge of electricity between two objects charged with different potentials that may occur when the objects are close to each other or come in contact with each other. In certain electronic devices, ESD may easily occur at a voltage of several kilovolts (kV) to tens of kV. In the case of semiconductor devices, damage due to ESD has become more problematic as the size of semiconductor devices have decreased especially from the micro-scale to the nano-scale.